The Bluest Eye
by
Toni Morrison
(Pecola’s
Search for Identity)
With the mass exodus of the blacks from the
agrarian South to the industrialized North, race riots, limited housing
resulting in slum housing, and restricted job opportunities were only a few of
the many hardships that the African-American people had to face at this time.
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye takes place during this time period. One of the
main themes in the novel is the “quest for individual identity.” This theme is
present throughout the novel and evident in many of the characters. Pecola Breedlove,
Cholly Breedlove, and Pauline Breedlove are all embodiments of this quest for
identity.
Through
her portrayal of Pecola, Morrison tries “to show a little girl as a total and
complete victim of whatever was around her.” She is a little black girl with
low self-esteem. The world has led her to believe that she is ugly and that the
epitome of “beautiful” requires blue eyes. Therefore, every night she prays
that she will wake up with blue eyes. Brought up as a poor unwanted girl,
Pecola desires the acceptance and love of society. The image of “Shirley
Temple” surrounds her. She harbours the notion, that if she is beautiful,
people would finally love and accept her, instead of despising and ridiculing
her for her ugliness. A pair of blue eyes becomes an obsession with her. An
incident in the novel centres on the insensitivity of the white folks toward
the coloured persons. Pecola has three pennies in her shoe which she has been
saving to buy Mary Janes from the store. The white owner ignores her presence
because she is invisible to him, as he busies himself attending to other white
girls. The total absence of human recognition is not new to her. She has seen
it lurking in the eyes of all white people. So, the distaste must be for her, her
blackness. This is what torments her as her human dignity is undermined because
of racial prejudice. As a result of the indifference of her teachers and
schoolmates and the whites in general, she suffers from a sense of isolation.
She has to sit all alone on the desk while her class-mates shared seats with one
another. Her teachers treat her this way. They do not glance at her, and call
on her only when the situation warrants. In the racially segregated school,
Pecola’s pitiable predicament gets into sharp focus.
Without
eliciting any loving response either from her rapist father and her indifferent
mother, the little girl in Pecola desperately seeks love, and her search for
identity is defined by her everlasting desire to be loved. Her purpose in life
is to be beautiful and as a result of that to be loved. But her family, community
and the white society make it impossible for her to be ever sanely content.
Pecola finds herself only by going insane. Although Pecola is not accepted by
society for reasons she does not understand, she puts her exclusion from
society into terms she can comprehend. In fact, society influences her
identity.
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